The impact of customised mobile marketing on passenger shopping behaviour in the airport terminal

With growing popularity of mobile devices, digital marketing strategies are increasingly important for modern airports. This paper studied context-aware mobile marketing strategies in the airport retail environment. An on-site mobile marketing experiment was conducted at a partner airport to explore how preference and/or location-based mobile coupons could affect passengers’ retail behaviour. Results show that retail shopping became more efficient (less browsing time) with mobile marketing influence, but not necessarily more effective (not higher spending amount). Randomly pushed mobile marketing information is effective in keeping passengers in shops for longer but context-aware mobile marketing is more effective in increasing spending amount.     

Spending time,spending money: passenger segmentation in an international airport

Changes within the air transport sector have required many European airports to either develop or expand their commercial activities. Strategies have included the expansion of retail space, a broadening of the tenant and merchandise mix and the development of a passenger segmentation strategy. This paper explores the efficacy of this approach by identifying the behaviour of different passenger segments while in an international airport. Using a framework of strategic market segmentation, it identifies how travellers allocate their time having entered ‘airside’ and details any purchases made. Using observational research and a face-to-face quantitative survey, 301 passengers were tracked and interviewed. Through a broad based, a priori form of segmentation, significant differences in shopping behaviour are identified. Such findings assist with the development of the airport's commercial strategy and allow a number of observations to be made about the value of market segmentation from both a theoretical and managerial perspective.     

Effect of time stress and store visibility on the dynamics of passenger activity choices at airport terminals based on indoor trajectory data

As mobile devices become more sophisticated and ubiquitous, airports have greater access to information on the activities of passengers and their reasons for engaging in such activities. This study proposes a novel trajectory-based dynamic choice model that can capture the effects of time stress, store visibility, and trajectory histories on activity choices in airport terminals. To evaluate the proposed model, two surveys on passenger trajectories and activities at Songshan Airport in Taipei, Taiwan, were conducted. The results reveal that although passengers under less time stress are more likely to perform discretionary activities, the dynamics of store-visiting choices suggest that airport shoppers can be distinguished into two types: shoppers whose store-visiting probability is negatively associated with time stress, and shoppers whose store-visiting probability has a concave relationship with time stress. The effect of visual attractiveness is especially strong for process activities (e.g., passing through security screening and passport control), and the variance in the visual-attractiveness effect for discretionary activities (e.g., shopping) is strongly influenced by the airport environment. The results also indicate novelty-seeking behavior: passengers are less likely to do something that they have already done. Our findings suggest that passengers behave heterogeneously in response to various levels of time stress but homogeneously in response to visual cues. Despite the variation in passenger characteristics, this study demonstrates that trajectory data alone are sufficient for the construction of passenger behavior models with satisfactory temporal transferability.     

Do airport staff helpfulness and communication generate behavioral loyalty in transfer passengers? A conditional mediation analysis

The footloose nature of transfer passengers in the turbulent air transport market landscape has necessitated the need to assess service marketing constructs relevant for airport competitiveness. The current cross-sectional study examined (1) the influence of transfer passengers’ perceived airport staff helpfulness and communication (H&C) on their behavioral loyalty, (2) the mediating roles of passenger affective image and satisfaction, and (3) the interaction effects of passenger types (trip purpose & travel frequency) and airport in the direct and indirect airport staff H&C – behavioral loyalty relation. Post-hoc analysis of transfer passengers’ perceived airport staff H&C across airports and passenger types was performed. Data was collected from three international airports in China (N = 829). Findings revealed that perceived airport staff H&C has significant positive associations with the three behavioral loyalty variables, and indicated further that these associations are partly explainable via passengers’ affective image and satisfaction. Also, the perceived airport staff H&C’s direct and indirect relations with behavioral loyalty variables are sensitive to passenger types but not airports. Expectedly, the post-hoc analysis showed that transfer passengers’ perceived airport staff H&C is significantly different across passenger types but not airports. Theoretical and practical implications, limitations and directions for future studies have been discussed.     

Impact of movie-watching on cross-selling revenue in shopping malls: Implications for post-pandemic recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted consumers to postpone in-store purchases and shift to online shopping, decreasing overall retail spending. As the global lockdown eases and shoppers return to offline stores and malls, shopping malls seek to facilitate in-store consumer experiences at entertainment facilities. Given the importance of entertainment facilities to the cross-selling revenue of shopping malls, we investigate the relationship between consumers' movie-watching and subsequent (hedonistic) grocery purchases. Our analysis of a panel database that includes transaction details at the consumer level shows that movie-watching is negatively correlated with consumer spending. Furthermore, consumers’ psychological states induced by content and contextual factors moderate the negative effect of movie-watching; after watching a fantasy (as compared to thriller) genre or watching a movie in a less crowded theater, consumers are more likely to make hedonic purchases at the supermarket. These findings provide theoretical and managerial implications for retail operators exploring cross-selling opportunities post-pandemic.     

Fundamental basket size patterns and their relation to retailer performance

This study uses a sample of approximately 60,000 US households to document fundamental shopping basket size patterns across a range of retail types, and examines them in relation to retailer performance metrics (unit sales and dollar revenue). Specifically, this research addresses two main questions: 1) how do shopping basket metrics (mean and median number of items, the distribution of one, two, three … n items) differ by retail type, and 2) how does the Pareto ratio (sales generated by the heaviest 20%, and lightest 80% of buyers) apply to shopping baskets. The results show that basket size patterns in retailers are predictable. Shoppers purchase more items on average in retailers that offer a greater variety of items, and the distribution of basket sizes follows the Poisson lognormal model. The results also show that the largest 20% of shopping baskets on average generate 50% of unit sales, and 40% of dollar revenue. These results set additional benchmarks of the patterns that can be expected when looking at data on a basket-level. This research offers implications to practitioners by showing the importance of small and large baskets for retailer revenue and growth, which can guide more informed decision making to better manage their stores and brands.     

The ‘online high street’ or the high street online? The implications for the urban retail hierarchy

The U.K. has the greatest proportion of online sales in Europe. This study seeks to explore the differential effects of online retailing on the (evolving) hierarchy of shopping centres by examining current trends and underlying forces. The overall objectives of the paper are to qualify and explore the influence of online retailing in the decision-making processes of leading retailers today; and to assess how virtual influences become manifest in the tangible built environment and have impacted the retail hierarchy? It differentiates online retail trends by sector and retailer size, and examines the consequences for different types of shopping centres. The empirical research is based on the changing location of stores of a major fashion retailer and interviews with three of Britain’s leading retailers that have seen the more substantial increase in online turnover in recent years. Major retailers are found to have integrated online offerings, such as click and collect, into a ‘multi-channel’ retailing approach. Online retailing has therefore become an inherent and central element within large retailers’ business and therefore real estate strategies, with considerations such as online marketplace penetration and possible ‘cannibalisation’ coming to the fore in decision-making about store location. Online retail sales are, to a degree, drawing sales away from shopping centres but its impact on the existing shopping hierarchy is largely to reinforce established long-term trends driven by the motor age and the shift to out of town retailing. This is symbolised by the largest ‘high street’ fashion retailer now having more branches in retail parks than town centres. Out of town shopping centres for example are benefitting because of the ease of goods collection offered by these locations.     

Testing Retail Marketing-Mix Effects on Patronage: A Meta-Analysis

Retailers have always worked to establish close relationships with customers through the retail marketing mix. Thus, the literature has a long tradition of testing the effects of various instruments on retail patronage. This meta-study synthesizes prior research into one comprehensive framework. We use 14,895 effect sizes reported by more than 239,000 shoppers from 41 countries extracted from 350 independent samples, to test the impact of 24 marketing-mix instruments on retail patronage. Specifically, we investigate the direct and indirect effects of these instruments on store satisfaction, word of mouth, patronage intention, and behavior. Product and brand management related instruments display the strongest effects on most outcome variables, whereas price, communication, service and incentive management instruments affect only selected outcomes. Distribution management turns out to be of secondary importance. However, the effectiveness of these instruments depends on the specific shopping context (food/non-food, shopping frequency, single store/agglomeration, hedonic/utilitarian), the retail environment (gross domestic product, country innovativeness, retail sales share, retail employment, Internet era), and the employed method (participant type, study design, data source). Specifically, we reveal most differences for hedonic shopping environments and developed countries. Also, the store’s advertising and atmosphere have gained importance in the Internet era, while purchase incentives, in-store orientation, and store location have lost relevance. This study contributes to a synoptic understanding of the comparable effectiveness of retail marketing instruments on retail patronage. It offers insights into the effectiveness of marketing-mix instruments and provides guidance on whether and when to invest in them. It also presents an agenda for future research on marketing-mix instruments.     

The Effect of Online Shopping Platform Strategies on Search,Display, and Membership Revenues

Most online shopping platform firms generate revenue from three sources: pay-per-click search advertising, pay-per-impression display advertising, and membership fees. The strategies that influence these revenue sources typically are studied individually, rather than in a holistic fashion. In response, this study uses time-series data with 18 million buyers and sellers from 2010 to 2011 and undertakes a quasi-experiment to analyze how the distinct effects of buyer- and seller-side strategies on revenues (1) vary across all three revenue sources and (2) depend differentially on a platform’s upmarket repositioning strategy. The results show that buyers that purchase through direct traffic (e.g., typing in the site address) yield more display advertising and membership fee revenues than those gained through organic traffic (e.g., landing from a search engine). Engagement strategies that appeal to established sellers (i.e., value-added services) yield more search advertising and membership revenue than those that appeal to new sellers (i.e., social forums). An upmarket repositioning strategy (i.e., eliminating low quality sellers) enhances the revenue effects of buyer traffic generation and seller engagement strategies. Post hoc analyses suggest that a 1% increase in direct traffic generates an additional $151,506 in display advertising revenue after (vs. before) the repositioning.     

Sources of customer satisfaction with shopping malls: A comparative study of different customer segments

Abstract

In spite of the growing importance of planned, centrally managed and enclosed shopping centres in the retailing sector, the understanding concerning sources and outcomes of customer satisfaction with this kind of shopping malls is limited. This paper develops and validates a conceptualisation of shopping mall satisfaction based on field studies in Sweden. The results show that eight underlying factors of varying character are important to customer satisfaction. These are selection, atmosphere, convenience, sales people, refreshments, location, promotional activities and merchandising policy. Furthermore, this study investigates whether sources of satisfaction differ in importance with respect to gender and age, generally two important variables for retail segmentation.     

Customer Experience Management in Retailing: An Organizing Framework

Survival in today's economic climate and competitive retail environment requires more than just low prices and innovative products. To compete effectively, businesses must focus on the customer's shopping experience. To manage a customer's experience, retailers should understand what “customer experience” actually means. Customer experience includes every point of contact at which the customer interacts with the business, product, or service. Customer experience management represents a business strategy designed to manage the customer experience. It represents a strategy that results in a win-win value exchange between the retailer and its customers. This paper focuses on the role of macro factors in the retail environment and how they can shape customer experiences and behaviors. Several ways (e.g., promotion, price, merchandise, supply chain and location) to deliver a superior customer experience are identified which should result in higher customer satisfaction, more frequent shopping visits, larger wallet shares, and higher profits.     

shopper taxonomy for retail strategy development

Segmentation of shoppers has been explored by many academic researchers and business practitioners seeking to understand shopping behaviour or to develop marketing strategies for particular customer groups. Market segmentation holds the key to successful marketing strategy as it encourages understanding of the key variables that differentiate specific segments.

The shopper taxonomy determined through this study is based on a set of variables that is relevant and appropriate for shopper segmentation and reflects the key aspects important to shoppers in motivating shopping behaviour towards a specific retail location. This taxonomy extends the proposed motivational taxonomy of Westbrook and Black (1985), derived from Tauber's (1972) earlier research. Westbrook and Black defined this taxonomy through shopping motives, and identified categories of product-oriented, experiential and a combination of product and experiential shoppers. Their research findings, however, pointed to a six-cluster typology, defining department stone shopping around seven motivations aligned with evaluating options and acquiring the products, engaging in the sales process and gaining stimulation and affiliation through the retail environment.

The “apathetic”, “shopping-processed involved” and “choice optimisation” shopper segments described by Westbrook and Black align with the “have to” “experiential” and “practical” “segments found in this study in terms of their focus on the shopping activity itself and the affiliation and stimulation motives associated with the shopping activity. Other associations between shopper segments across the two studies are less clear, and may be explained through the differing purposes for which the studies were undertaken and resulting variation in the measures used to define the motivational constructs.     

An empirical analysis of tenant location patterns near department stores in planned regional shopping centers

The location of a store within a mall can affect the sales and profits of the store and its neighbors, and those of the mall׳s owner/developer. Because the interests of retail stores and the mall׳s owner/developer with respect to choice of location might not coincide, bargaining power might come into play. To assess empirically whether relative bargaining power as between a retail store and the mall owner/developer affects store location within a center, we focus on locations of stores near the department store tenants of malls. Department stores might have the bargaining power necessary to affect which tenants are chosen as neighbors of the department store.Using data collected from 148 regional shopping centers (malls) in 2007 in the five westernmost provinces of Canada, we examine the relationship between variables that reflect store location patterns near a department store׳s entrance, and variables associated with the bargaining power of developers. We find that the density of stores selling comparison shopping goods is larger near department stores within centers that are older or have a larger gross leasable area. In addition, such density is negatively related to the number of department stores contained in the center. Because a shopping center׳s age, gross leasable area, and the number of department stores in a center are expected to be associated with a developer׳s bargaining power, the above findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the store location patterns near department stores depend on the relative bargaining power of the developer and the department stores.     

Drivers of agglomeration effects in retailing: The shopping mall tenant's perspective

Abstract

Retail and service enterprises seek benefits and synergies from locating their stores within retail agglomerations, such as shopping streets and malls. The aim of this paper is to identify the main drivers of such synergetic or ‘agglomeration effects’ for tenants. A literature review reveals four sets of drivers that are related to the location, the tenant mix, the marketing, and the management of an agglomeration. Based on a survey of 217 managers representing stores that are located in five regional and four supra-regional shopping malls, we demonstrate that location-related drivers including geographical location, accessibility, and parking conditions have a the highest impact on agglomeration effects in terms of the economic success of tenants. The results were consistent amongst different types of tenants differentiated by store size, customer footfall, industry affiliation, and perceived role within the respective mall (as footfall taker or generator within the network).     

Estimating small-area demand of urban tourist for groceries: The case of Greater London

Tourist retail demand within urban areas brings both opportunities and challenges to the local economy. Taking Greater London as the study area, this paper integrates conventional statistics and survey datasets with novel crowdsourcing big data sources to identify and estimate four types of tourist grocery demand at the small-area scale: travellers staying with Airbnb, tourists using traditional commercial accommodation, guests staying with relatives or friends and day trip visitors. Based on this combined tourist retail demand layer we show the spatial variations at the small-area level and as an illustration of the demand uplift, we estimate additional grocery expenditure that is associated with this tourist demand. Thus, the paper indicates the neighbourhoods with significant grocery demand uplift from tourist stays. We argue that the new retail demand layer has tremendous potential to be used as an additional input to retail location modelling tools to support new store revenue estimation and store performance evaluation within the grocery retail sector.     

How do consumers process digital display ads in-store? The effect of location,content, and goal relevance

This study examines under which circumstances customers are more likely to process in-store digital display ads. An exploratory field study is conducted (n = 296), with a between-subjects, 2 (value-expressive versus utilitarian messages) by 2 (entrance versus register location) by 2 (low versus high goal relevance) quasi-experimental design, in a retail store of horticulture-, baking- and pet supplies. The findings show that DS can appeal to both segments of customers when positioned in proximity to the register, rather than the entrance. In terms of the content displayed, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach as both types of content have different effects, depending on the shopping goal of the customer.     

Location effects: Geo-spatial and socio-demographic determinants of sales dynamics in brick-and-mortar retail stores

For brick-and-mortar retail operators, store location is an essential prosperity factor, affecting the volume and structure of sales. Understanding the complexity of location effects on sales dynamics and utilizing such information may be the key element of corporate success in a competitive market environment. In general, store locations can be characterized by representative sets of geo-spatial and socio-demographic features. Nowadays, multiple sources of location-related data are available from public authorities and other open sources. However, using such data may be a complex task: distinct location factors can have divergent effects on sales of different types of products. Hence, our objective is to quantify the effects of different measures of location on sales dynamics over a wide range of product categories. For this purpose, we introduce a methodology combining econometric modeling and cluster analysis. The presented empirical analysis is performed using data on 479 brick-and-mortar shops of a major drugstore chain operating in Czechia (2019 data are used to avoid distortions due to COVID-19). Besides estimating location effects on sales at the product-category level, we identify and evaluate groups (clusters) of product categories with similar sales dynamics. Both the methodology proposed and the empirical results presented can be utilized by different retail chains to assess and plan brick-and-mortar store locations. Also, the research presented can be instructive for academic researchers and other stakeholders in the fast-moving consumer goods sector.     

Cyclists' helmet usage and characteristics in central and southern Malawi: a cross-sectional study

The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of, and factors associated with, bicycle helmet usage in southern and central Malawi. This study was across-sectional observation of public behaviour. The urban and rural roadways in southern and central Malawi were studied during the dry season. In total, 1900 bicyclists were observed along the roadways of southern and central Malawi over a four-day period. Observer ascertainment of cyclists' helmet status, approximate age, sex and bicycle operator or passenger status were measured. Of the 1900 cyclists observed, no cyclist was identified as wearing a helmet (exact 95% CI: 0.0–0.2%). There was no variation by age, sex or operator/passenger status. Nearly, 91.5% of observed cyclists were males and 87.7% were operating the bicycle. The sizeable majority of male cyclists were classified as young adults from adolescence to 25 years old (47.2%) or adults over age 25 (44.9%); 7.9% of male cyclists were pre-adolescent. Passengers were more likely to be female than operators (39.1% versus 4.2%), though, even for passengers, a higher proportion were males than females (p < 0.001). In Malawi, helmet usage is so rare as to be non-existent. This suggests an opportunity for significant improvement. Based on the observed cyclists' characteristics, interventions should be targeted to adult and young adult males.     

Lessons learned from international expansion failures and successes

Many retail and restaurant companies adopt international expansion as a strategy to take advantage of business opportunities presented by target markets. Common objectives include increasing revenue, escaping a hypercompetitive or saturated home market, entering an emerging or lucrative market, and leveraging domestic capabilities in a bordering country. Success in international expansion is not guaranteed, however; the business world is littered with failures. In this article, we examine the international expansion failures of five service companies that opened physical facilities in a foreign country: Target, Tim Hortons, Best Buy, Tesco, and Walmart. While a variety of factors led to these failures, some common causes have been identified. These include a lack of understanding of the purchasing characteristics of consumers, underestimation of the local competition, supply chain issues, and poor strategic decisions regarding facility location and the rate of expansion. Not all international expansions are failures, though, and herein we also present the success stories of Aldo, Carrefour, and Nordstrom. These companies understood customer preferences and focused on location issues and their supply chains. Based on the aforementioned failures and successes, we offer guidance for companies looking to expand their business operations via a physical presence in a foreign country.